Quantile regression is an increasingly important tool that estimates the conditional quantiles of a response Y given a vector of regressors D. It usefully generalizes Laplace’s median regression and can be used to measure the effect of covariates not only in the center of a distribution, but also in the upper and lower tails. For the linear quantile model defined by Y = D′γ(U) where D′γ(U) is s...

A new procedure aiming at disentangling the instrumental profile broadening and the relevant X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) profile shape is presented. The technique consists of three steps: denoising by means of wavelet transforms, background suppression by morphological functions and deblurring by a Lucy–Richardson damped deconvolution algorithm. Real XRPD intensity profiles of ceria samples...

The dorsal striatum plays a key role in the learning and expression of instrumental reward associations that are acquired through direct experience. However, not all learning about instrumental actions require direct experience. Instead, humans and other animals are also capable of acquiring instrumental actions by observing the experiences of others. In this study, we investigated the extent t...

BACKGROUND Instrumental action is well known to be vulnerable to affective value. Excessive transfer of affective value to instrumental action is thought to contribute to psychiatric disorders. The brain region most commonly implicated in overriding such affective biasing of instrumental action is the prefrontal cortex. OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to reduce affective biasing of...

We examined functional transitions in both the activities of daily living (ADL), and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), over a 1-year interval among older Japanese living in a community, then estimated their physically active life expectancy (PALE) and instrumentally active life expectancy (IALE). In 1992, all residents aged 65 or older who lived in Saku City, Nagano, Japan, were f...

This study evaluated the association between anemia and physical functional capacity in a cross-sectional population-based sample of 709 hospitalized elderly patients aged 60 years and over admitted to the Madre Teresa Hospital, Belo Horizonte, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The Mann-Whitney or "t" test, and chi-square or Fisher exact test were used for quantitative and categorical variables, r...

OBJECTIVES To investigate whether number of children and, among parents, having a daughter is associated with older people's likelihood of at least weekly face-to-face social contact and later receipt of help if needed. METHOD Multivariate analysis of data from Waves 1 and 2 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). RESULTS Older parents in England had higher chances of at least w...

OBJECTIVE The autonomy of individuals is linked to the achievement of instrumental activities of daily living that require complex behavior. In the elderly, the assessment of autonomy is usually based on questionnaires that have strong subjective constraints. Considering this fact, we tested elderly healthy adults and Alzheimer disease patients using a new measure, the S-IADL (Simulation of Ins...

OBJECTIVE This work aims to validate and increase understanding of the Global Activity Limitation Index (GALI), an activity limitation measure from which the new structural indicator Healthy Life Years is generated. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING Data from the Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe, covering 11 European countries and 27,340 individuals older than 50 years, was used to investigat...